Movin' on up.

Today we mourn the dearly departed

The day has finally come when we must say goodbye to someone that we have come to love and cherish. After nearly five years together tonight marks the passing of my comforter. I know, you are thinking, seriously she is posting about her comforter, and the answer is yes, yes I am.

In May of 2001 I was getting ready to move into a house with a friend from work. I needed a new comforter and a women at work said that she had a comforter that she never used. A down comforter. I told her I would buy it and her husband told her that she couldn't take money for something they didn't use so she gave me a very expensive, never used, down comforter for free, it was love at first sight. For the past five years there have been very few nights that I did not sleep under this comforter.

I actually had it shipped here when I moved. All of my cousins now have a down comforter as a result of sleeping under mine. When they were all home last year at Christmas I was constantly searching rooms to find my missing comforter.

The only problem with the comforter was that it was white and I am a mess. I have a tendency to put my makeup on, or study while sitting in my bed, or I pull the comforter to the couch for a movie night so over the years the comforter has received several washing and a handful of permanent marks.

About three months ago I noticed that the comforter was leaking feathers so I searched and found a small tear and repaired it. A few weeks after that I noticed another tear and repaired that. In early December I found myself sitting in bed with a needle and thread trying to patch all of the holes. Finally I found a duvet cover and thought I had spared myself the grief of throwing away my beloved comforter, last night I tried to take the cover off so that I could wash it and I noticed a large number of feathers so I left the comforter in the cover and threw them both into the wash. Today I opened the dryer door and found a bird in the lint trap so I set everything outside hoping that the sun would dry everything and save the comforter but tonight I looked to see the damage and found that the comforter had tried to escape all over the back porch and into the neighbors yard.

So with a heavy heart and taps playing in my mind, I pulled the empty carcass of a once glorious comforter out of the duvet cover and threw it in the trash.

Tonight we mourn the dearly departed, comforter, you kept me warm in the winter and cool in the summer, you caught my tears when I was sad and you gave my cat a comfortable place to spend 23 hours a day sleeping. I have enjoyed making you a part of my cherished sleep and I appreciate the abuse that you took every morning when I threw you onto the ground in protest of being made to wake up. You made reading books in bed more comfortable and you gave my eyes protection during the scary scenes on movie nights. I tried to patch and protect you from the thinning of your shell but in the end old age won the war.

Do not go softly into that dark night but rage, rage against the dying of the light. I will visit you in the trash can every night before bed, well, every night between now and Monday when the trash people will take you away, you will be on your own then but know that Noodle and I will miss you terribly and will tremble at night because we live in a basement in Pennsylvania and I just threw out our comforter.

posted by Unknown @ 8:22 PM